


maiden mother crone

by MoonShoesReyes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Zutara, Hurt/Comfort, Katara (Avatar)-centric, Romance, Slow Burn, The Blue Spirit - Freeform, The Painted Lady - Freeform, former kataang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonShoesReyes/pseuds/MoonShoesReyes
Summary: After the ravages of war, Katara learns to wear three faces: maiden, mother, and crone.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Minor), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 73





	maiden mother crone

**Author's Note:**

> I DID NOT WRITE THIS. My glorious friend, who I will call Olive, wrote this. We did a Valentine's Day fic exchange, and her piece was so good that she wanted to publish. She did not want to go through all of the hassle of creating an ao3, so she asked me to publish here! She is so insanely talented.

The full moon bathed her shoulders in familiar light. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled up at the night sky as if to drink it in. The warm breeze, the torchlight, the music could not sway her from the garden - not when the moon smiled down on her so. A moment’s rest from the party. She deserved it - it had been almost five long years since she had been anywhere like this. She was not used to the fancy silk dress or the makeup anymore. The delicate food. The crowds. People addressing her by her real name and title: Katara, Princess of the Southern Water Tribe. 

She blinked away the way Sokka and Suki had greeted her amidst the ferns and crimson banners. She hadn’t seen them in over a year. Letters could not quite close the distance between them, even though she posted letters each time she passed through a town. Their paths just hadn’t crossed. They hadn’t quite understood. But they smiled when she came into view, and she smiled back, if tearfully. They hugged and it felt so good to see her brother again. Familiar guilt tugged at her heart. She had so much to tell him. 

_With time,_ Katara reminded herself. With time, Sokka would understand. He had had just as many adventures. They would be close again. 

The music swelled and broke through her reverie. The tune carried memories of a few months in the Earth Kingdom. The farmers taught her the dance and she burned the moonlight twirling around the fire. The laughter of the farmers, their families, her companions swirled with the melody and reignited something in her chest. She still felt the grass and straw under her toes. Still felt the tug of Hyung’s fingers on her wrist. Still felt the fire in her lungs as she pushed herself faster and faster, her breath coming in great heaves. She felt alive. 

The last month taught her optimism. Maybe she would feel alive dancing to this song again, now, surrounded by people who had known her and loved her a long time ago. People who still knew her and loved her, just differently. 

Unbidden, the outline of a figure filled her mind’s eye and crowded out her surroundings. With a blue mask and two swords, he looked the same as he did nine years ago, but different. He was stronger now. Kinder. Sure of himself. His transformation had run as completely as hers did. As if they had lived in the same chrysalis. As if each painful heartbreak, choice, and journey happened side-by-side in the same world where only they existed. 

As unseen and unknown as she felt back on the world’s stage of politics and diplomacy, perhaps at least one person knew her and loved her exactly as she was, exactly where she was. 

It was enough to make her smile again, so wide she closed her eyes. In and out she breathed, wanting to fully inhabit this moment so totally consumed by him. She carried him - his smile, his laugh, his touch, his mind, his love - across the world. Now she came home. Now she came back. 

“Katara?” 

His voice, for once spoken aloud and not in her head, whipped her around. 

Now she came home. 

_Maiden_

_Nine years prior_

“We’re going to save the world!” Aang crowed. Beneath him, Appa bellowed. Katara smiled up at him. Though Ozai had been imprisoned for over a month, she still found it hard to believe that the war was over. She did not know what it was like to exist without the war. She had never been alive in peace. 

Suddenly she had so much time. For the past year, mastering waterbending and capturing Ozai had consumed her every thought. What else could break through her concentration - Yon Rha, Jet, her father, her mother, Gran Gran, the South Pole - came in unwelcome, unplanned fractals. She thought that the end of the war would mean the end of the nights she awoke in a cold sweat, grasping for breath. She was wrong. But every day spent with Sokka, Suki, Toph, Aang, and Zuko healed her like the currents of a pool. Time with Hakoda helped too. Roaming the streets of Ba Sing Se let her heart float back down to her body and remember that she was fourteen. She could laugh. She could care about silly things. The world would still spin. 

Aang winked at her from atop Appa and beckoned for her to join him. She almost tripped over her feet scrabbling up Appa’s furry leg. 

“Where are we going today?” Katara asked breathlessly. A map of the Earth Kingdom lay before her feet. Cities, townships, and villages sprawled across the green tapestry. 

Their first trip took them to a fishing village at the very northmost tip of the territory. The people there spoke a different dialect than the language Katara heard in Ba Sing Se. Some of them remembered the Fire Nation’s dominion, but others could not. The hardships of the weather and the economic downturn from the war stood starkly in their minds, however. They sought to resume trade with the Northern Water Tribe now that the Fire Nation no longer controlled the seas. They worried about continued grain shortages and the stability of infrastructure that would keep essential supplies trickling into their village during the winter. At night, the people told different stories from the ones Katara grew up hearing. 

“Hong,” Aang replied as he re-checked their supply bags. Pride prickled in her chest. It had been his idea to do these scouting missions. In the first days after Ozai’s imprisonment, when they all still wore bags under their eyes and flinched at loud noises, Aang had looked at her and said he wanted to create lasting peace. Perhaps, he wondered, he first needed to learn what the Earth Kingdom needed. She loved that he cared enough to visit every corner of the nation. He cared enough to listen. Zuko had loved the idea and asked them to do their own scouting missions around the Fire Nation when they finished surveying the Earth Kingdom. 

It was a time to rediscover, Zuko said, a time to be reborn. 

“I wonder what it will be like there,” Katara mused, “Do you think they’ll worship a beaver-monkey like the people in Nuo?” 

Aang laughed and they shared a smile. The beaver-monkey believers had been one of the first real tests of the Avatar in peacetime. They believed that the beaver-monkey decided all and that it was their duty to simply live out his wishes. Years of exploitation at the hands of the Fire Nation? The beaver-monkey made it so. The return of the Avatar? The beaver-monkey made it so. Was there anything that they wanted from their new government? The beaver-monkey’s will would be wrought. What worries did they have? None, for the beaver-monkey would provide everything that they needed. After trying and failing to elicit anything from the villagers besides their deep devotion to the beaver-monkey had Katara and Aang fuming by the time they went to bed that night. But in the firelight, they both agreed they could see beauty in that kind of unwavering love and faith. Katara didn’t know if she had ever felt that way - so sure that someone else would take care of her, that someone else cared for her at all. 

Looking at Aang over the embers, she wondered if that was changing too. 

The memory warmed every inch of her insides as she laughed with Aang and settled into her seat in Appa’s saddle. 

_Just like old times,_ she thought. Peacetime had fractured everything she knew. Being back on Appa grounded her, irony aside. 

“Ready, Forever Girl?” Aang teased with a slanted brow. Katara surveyed their packs, the map, and the blue, cloudless skies of the early morning. Her eyes lingered on her friends, bleary on the stone roads, waving up at them. But she would always find her way home. 

“Ready!” she shouted, “Yip, yip!” 

_Seven years prior_

Katara twisted her hair in a knot atop her head and secured it with a glittering comb. Aang had pressed the beautiful seashell into her palm on the sunset of her last birthday. Nice things fell into her hands all the time, which she dutifully passed to her father or Aang, depending on whose diplomat she acted as that day. As a woman of the state, or as the Avatar’s attache, she had no real claim to the treasures foisted upon her. Ceremonial robes and dresses and decorative scrolls and jewels littered the archives of the Southern Water Tribe which stood, confusingly, in the Northern Water Tribe as a sign of good faith between the two nations. Things given to her as the Avatar’s attache ended up in one of the Air Temples or redistributed to the indigent. Her travels kept her busy and she lived out of a rucksack. Katara never minded - it was familiar after all the years - but it meant she had few possessions to her name. 

When Aang gently handed her the comb, she felt beautiful. He gasped as she pushed it into her hair and heat flooded her. She was more than a diplomat, a war hero, a master bender - she also Katara. She owned something beautiful, bought just for Katara. 

“You look gorgeous,” Aang said from the doorway. She jumped and laughed. 

“You startled me.” 

“You startle me every day, being so pretty.” 

Katara blushed deeply and rose to her feet. She ran across the room and threw her arms around his neck. His familiar warmth soothed the jittering in her stomach. 

“It’s been too long,” he murmured into her neck, “I hate being away from you.” 

“Me too,” she said, embarrassed by how the words caught in her throat. Her eyes burned. 

“The summit sucked.” 

Aang rocked the two of them from side to side, lulling her back into the safety of him. 

“Zuko told me,” she replied, “He said the Earth Kingdom nobles wouldn’t shut up.” 

“And they were mean. I hate when people are mean.” 

“Me too,” she smiled. 

Aang pulled back from her embrace to brush a kiss on her mouth. With every moment, he felt more like home. Especially here, in a grand ice palace in the North. 

While he and Zuko had shouted themselves hoarse during the unending peace talks, negotiations, and plans of the Earth Kingdom, Katara had taught masses of Northern Water Tribe girls how to bend. Or at least, that was what Hakoda had written in his missive Chief Arnook three months ago. He offered the Princess of the South to the North as another goodwill gesture. She would teach the girls how to bend and in the meantime, “foster relations between the sister Water Tribes.” Unofficially, Katara tested the waters - would the Northern Water Tribe agree to trade and fishing agreements with the northmost Earth Kingdom states? Would the Northern Water Tribe truly be a friend to the South? Did the Northern Water Tribe see the downfall of Ozai and the end of the Fire Nation regime as an opportunity to seize power for themselves? 

The first time Katara spied, she felt guilty. She felt like a spider, silent, crafting, and untrustworthy. The people who opened their homes, hearths, and tables to her did so with compassion and faith. They did not suspect that she wrote back every word to her father or Aang. They did not suspect that their conversations with the quiet, poised, friendly woman would go on to inform decisions of state or lead to the arrests of their peers or thwart their uprisings. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night unable to forget the secrets she told. The people she betrayed. 

With time, it had gotten easier. She had learned to swallow her guilt and remember the greater good. She protected the first peace the world had known in a century. Could that really make her a spider to the core? 

She brushed aside her musings to gaze back into Aang’s eyes. _I am Katara,_ she chanted to herself, _I am the Avatar’s girlfriend. I am from the Southern Water Tribe. I am a master waterbender._

“I’m happy you’re here,” she sighed and took his hand. He beamed down at her. 

“Ready to go to dinner?” 

Katara nodded and they set off down the hall. The twinkling torches lit the glassy ice. With her bending, she felt the water in the frozen walls. Silent and still, despite the fire playing on their surface. Untouchable to the core. Sometimes she felt like that, when she had been on a diplomatic adventure too long. When she forgot how to take off the mask of Katara, visiting master, visiting pretty face, returning princess, or Ani, the farmer from Hong, or Melina, the radical Fire Nation agitator out to seek revenge. She wore so many faces that sometimes her own looked strange. 

But tonight, she would smile and wave. Tonight she just had to be Katara, Aang’s girlfriend and Katara, waterbending master. The woman who doted upon the little girls who slowly, surely learned to hurl ice through the air and freeze water around each other’s ankles in games of tag. Girls, Katara hoped, would never settle for anything less than becoming a master. Those faces were close enough to the truth. 

Aang squeezed her fingers as they entered the grand dining room. Arnook had hosted them a few times in the last years, but the space still felt unfamiliar, foreboding, and cold - even to Katara. The furs and banners on the walls spoke of brutality more than comfort to her. One wall opened to the tundra while large windows interrupted the other three. Large cauldrons of fire kept the room warm, or tried to. Blankets hung on the back of each chair like an afterthought for those not strong enough to withstand the chill. She didn’t let her discomfort show on her face. 

The other dinner guests - dignitaries, Northern Water Tribe nobles and leaders - milled about, sipping hot tea. Katara spotted Arnook talking to her father, who was visiting for the end of her stay. Ostensibly, tonight’s dinner was in her honor, to thank her for doing her part in the friendship between the Northern and Southern water Tribes. Evidently, that only meant that she got to select one of three dinner menu options provided by the cook. The guest list, the decor, the date, the idea of a dinner party at all were out of her hands. Still, she resolved to enjoy what she could. She would shake hands with Arnook and say something nice about the Northern Water Tribe. She would gush about her students. She would make veiled small talk with her father. She would bask in Aang’s warmth. She would say hi to Zuko - 

“Zuko?” Katara called, almost automatically, when she spotted the glint of his headpiece in the firelight. His broad shoulders stiffened as he rose from where he had crouched down to speak with a withered woman. As he turned, a wide smile cut across his face. 

“Katara! Aang!” 

The three hustled together and Zuko engulfed them both in his arms. 

“I didn’t know you were coming!” Katara said, unable to keep the joy out of her voice. 

“Your letters made me want the real thing,” Zuko replied, with a sidelong look at Aang, “and your boyfriend thought it would be a good surprise.” 

Katara took Aang’s hand again and squeezed it, whispering, “Thank you.” 

Moments, maybe hours later, the gong that signaled the beginning of dinner rang through her in a jolt. Getting lost in Aang and Zuko’s stories of Omashu helped her feet stay firmly on the ground. Their voices wove into a song that chimed _you are Katara, you are Katara, you are Katara._ She floated to her chair, guided by Aang, and let herself be. 

As the dinner wore on, Katara endured congratulations for her work with her students and listened to stories from around the world. The sole Earth Kingdom noble, who had not been present at the summit, seemed woefully unaware as to why Zuko and Aang looked so disgruntled. A pair of Fire Nation ambassadors barely spoke at all, seemingly as surprised as Katara at the presence of their Fire Lord. Arnook spoke of plans for a new learning center in the Northern Tribe that would combine healing and fighting arts. Hakoda talked about Sokka and home. The whole time, Katara laughed and smiled when she should. 

In between the octopus and the cheese course, a Northerner caught Katara’s eye across the table. Her eyes shone bright sapphire nestled in a fine web of new wrinkles. 

“Princess Katara, you should hear my daughter talk about your classes,” the woman said. Katara’s stomach dropped. 

“Oh,” she forced herself to say, “I’m glad. What’s her name?”

“Atiqtalik.” 

“Atiqtalik. She’s a wonderful bender. You must be very proud.” 

“She’s improved so much with your help. She’s much stronger and sure.” 

“That is very kind,” Katara replied. The arrival of a selection of cheeses rescued her from more praise. From the side of her vision, she saw Aang select a few chunks as Nuniq, a Northerner in charge of the harbors, told a complicated, but seemingly hilarious joke. Everyone else appeared to do the same. But Katara had lost her appetite. 

“Excuse me,” she muttered to no one. She scuttled away hoping no one saw or heard her. As fast as she could without looking suspicious, she tore through the hallway and tumbled through the first open door she found. When she closed the door behind her, Katara found she stood in a small sitting room with a selection of chairs, tables, and bookshelves. A window threw the rest of the room into relief. Suddenly desperate for the cold, Katara rushed to the window and gulped down the fresh air. 

Atiqtalik was her best student. At the first lesson, she wouldn’t talk to any of the other girls. She hadn’t been able to bend at all and cried fat, frustrated tears. Katara dispelled the teasing when she heard it, but she was certain the other girls made fun of Atiqtalik when she wasn’t around. After the second lesson, Katara kept Atiqtalik from rushing off to her chores. Atiqtalik cried more fat tears but agreed to go sledding with Katara. The memory of hurtling down the great, icy hills with the seven year old made Katara proud and ashamed at once. The whole time her heart beat out _I am a traitor; you think that I am your friend; I am no one; I am pretending._

Though she felt guilty for befriending Atiqtalik, Katara continued her sledding lessons after each bending session. The first time Atiqtalik bent in class, Katara nearly cried. Every week after, Atiqtalik improved. She never gave up. She started talking more with the other girls. Katara reasoned that she had just needed a friend. 

A friend. She couldn’t really make friends anymore. She couldn’t be known. If she wasn’t known, she could be anything and everything - a perfect weapon of state. A perfect chameleon. A perfect tool for Aang, Hakoda, whoever. All in service of a lasting peace she desperately wished for. A lasting peace that sometimes seemed so far out of reach on her travels, hearing the stories of the downtrodden, disenfranchised, and angry. And then exploiting their trust. 

Aang justified her role by not speaking about it. He bit his lip when she brought it up, a sure sign that he felt guilty too, but soothed them both with platitudes. The peace would be worth it when it came. If she hated it so much, she could stop. It would be okay. 

And Katara knew that he was right. It would be okay. Two years of lies and betrayal seemed a small price to pay for a lasting peace. She just felt like an empty vessel. She was unsure of if Katara would fill the space that was left when peace came. 

“Katara?” 

“I just needed some air,” she said automatically and brushed away a stray tear. Katara caught herself - it was Zuko, not Aang who stepped through the door. Frantically she sought composure. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. Zuko took a step towards her and drew his brows together. 

“You haven’t seemed very happy in your letters. I’ve been worried about you.” 

“Oh,” she gasped. And she couldn’t stop the tears in her eyes any longer. 

_Mother_

_Six years prior_

_I am Katara, the Painted Lady._

It was her only message to Zuko that day - unusual, given the long missives they exchanged by messenger hawk across the world daily. But today, her confession said more than enough. Zuko had long suspected, hinted at, and downright begged for the truth. He earned her trust a long time ago, but waking up that morning in Omashu, seeing the sun stream through the windows, it just felt like the right day. 

Katara grinned her way through her breakfast bun. Her joy somehow chased away the deep tiredness from last night. Bending the pollution out of the river in Haui took more time than she anticipated. The garbage, muck, and oil clung tightly to the rich soils of the Haui. Katara fought with all her strength and will until the early hours of the dawn. If the townspeople heard her, no one said a word. Long ago, the people nestled in the river bends learned not to tell tales of the Painted Lady. Her presence foretold fortune. Best not to chase her away with gossip. When a loose tongue told too many stories, the Painted Lady disappeared. And the strangled, dirty rivers and the people they fed did not have time to waste. 

If anyone noticed that the Painted Lady appeared around the cities where Princess Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, beloved of the Avatar, noted stateswoman happened to do business, no one said anything. If they did, they found themselves visited by a strange spirit with two swords and a blue face, threatening to cut out their tongue and damn them to perdition. 

Katara smiled wider at the memory of the first time the Painted Lady met the Blue Spirit. They ran into each other, quite literally, in a marsh beset with both pollution and greed. A cohort of merchants from Ba Sing Se stumbled upon the quiet fishing village months before and realized the wealth of resources. The plentiful fish and the rushing water - they stood to make hundreds, perhaps thousands in coin if they could establish a mill and start exporting the fish. They began evicting the villagers from their homes and fishing more than they could eat. They built over the marsh and the surrounding waters. 

One night, Katara stole over their new construction site. She sent waves over the new mill and the new docks. Shards of ice pierced the doors of the merchants in warning. She wrung out all the murky water until it sparkled. The merchants ran from their homes, shouting for the Painted Lady. She thought that she evaded them until a thick, sweaty arm wrapped around her neck from behind. A fist of water sprung from the marsh and hit her assailant in the side. They both fell to the ground, but he didn’t let go. As she struggled to catch her breath, he grabbed her tighter. 

The white, hot panic that seared her lungs stood in stark contrast to the hazy blackness that obscured her vision. She lost time and space. Only her heartbeat rang in her ears as she struggled. 

All of a sudden the world snapped back to Katara. Her eyes blinked away the blackness and feeling came back to her fingers and toes. The ringing in her ears quieted. She blinked again and saw him. 

The blue mask hid his features well. Even if Zuko hadn’t told her his secret years ago, she would have known by the way that he carried himself and the twin blades on his back. His lethal grace was hard-won, beaten into him by a childhood of neglect and abuse. He earned his power through will alone. And they were friends because he used that power to help people. 

“My Lady,” Zuko rasped in a pale attempt to conceal his voice, “are you hurt?”

Katara shook her head and rushed to her feet. When she lost her balance, Zuko caught her around the waist and straightened her. The heat of his hands made her fizzle and yearn. Katara looked deeply into the eye slits of his mask and ran away before he could be sure it was her. 

She knew, even then, why she hid her identity from him. After years of being empty, Katara finally knew who she was - or at least, she knew who she was at the core. Though her cast of masks stayed ever changing, the Painted Lady was always kind and just. The Painted Lady let her be Katara the woman while Katara the mask could be anyone Aang needed her to be. Having a secret only she knew let her feel whole again. 

Or as close to a secret only she knew. Aang, of course, knew, having figured her out the first time. He disapproved. The Painted Lady wrought too much destruction on the aggressors. The Painted Lady destroyed infrastructure that many people depended on. The Painted Lady acted outside the law in a time when the appearance of strength in government mattered most. The Painted Lady undermined all the order the Avatar sought to achieve. The Painted Lady meted out justice when she should have prioritized peace. 

She wasn’t ready to share the Painted Lady with anyone else. 

Until today. 

As she wandered her way up to the peak of the rebuilt Omashu Katara tried to guess Zuko would say. She was getting better at guessing after their years of correspondence. Where she always knew what Aang would say, and mostly knew what Sokka would say, and could only really talk to Toph in person, Zuko remained a mystery. Where she expected him to be callous, he was often kind. Where she expected anger he was patient. She liked to listen to his musings of running the Fire Nation. He complained about the thankless, endless task of rooting out the racism, misogyny, and imperialism rotting the Fire Nation from the core. He wrote smugly of establishing new laws that would provide for the impoverished and opening a new school. He asked for her input on public school curriculum guidelines. He wanted to know her favorite Water Tribe recipes.

She waited for Aang’s letters too, of course. She loved him. She was his Forever Girl. After four years together, he was as much a part of her as her lungs. She missed him when their adventures took them apart. She counted down the days to when he would meet her in Omashu for a few days. She hoped for the day they would settle down – maybe in Republic City.

But for now, she was alone in Omashu with a rare day stretched ahead of her.

She wandered through an outdoor market and sampled a few oranges. She took in the cut flowers and the bustling sounds of life around her. Families erupted in color and noise around her. She meandered to a park and read a book. She sketched out plans for a public bending academy in Republic City. She wrote letters to Sokka and Suki and Toph’s secretary and Hakoda. She savored the breeze in her hair and thought of all the times Aang sent a gentle wind across her neck.

She read reports of villages in need of the Painted Lady and resolved that her next diplomatic mission would be to Linxia.

In the late afternoon a pinch on her shoulder told her that Zuko read her letter. Written in big, bold letters was, “I WAS RIGHT.” At the very bottom, he scratched a reiteration of his standing offer to visit. Underneath that, he had scrawled, “May the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady meet again. Peril to those who oppose.”

_Four and a half years prior_

She couldn’t put her finger on when living as a doll started to hurt. In the beginning, lying and pretending felt like a prick. Every fake smile and state dinner prickled. Over the years, the prickle became a string and became an ache until she just hurt. She wanted to be Katara, all the time. Not the Avatar’s girlfriend – increasingly a purely ceremonial role. As their tenuous peace grew into stability, invitations for Katara tended towards tea parties and away from state meetings. Suddenly the projects on her desk revolved around approving designs for the Avatar’s new residence at the Eastern Air Temple.

She thought that leaving her life as a spy would give the emptiness within her time to fill out again. But she hadn’t accounted for a future in which she wasn’t a fighter or decision-maker. Even the Southern Water Tribe barely needed her with Sokka and Suki settling down. She still acted as Hakoda’s eyes and ears around the globe, but he needed her less than he had in the first few years.

Only the Painted Lady made her feel like Katara, still.

For the last year, she had relaxed some of her earlier rules – stay in small villages, don’t attack unless provoked, don’t take needless risks. Slowly she expanded her reach to larger towns. The sheer volume of polluted water overwhelmed her the first time, as had the number of assailants who chased her through the woods. But seeing the sparkling waters flowing through the town and the healthy, plump fish caught in nets a month later made it worth it. She would risk being caught again. She would become even stronger, to clear even the ocean if needed.

Keeping the Painted Lady secret grew harder. More people saw the whisps of her dress in the fog. More people talked than the Blue Spirit quieted. Katara let them – let them scare others who might exploit the rivers for their own gain.

Cleaning the rivers and punishing the responsible made her Katara. Nothing else any longer.

“- the peppers or the beans?”

Katara blinked back to reality. She looked up at the expectant face of the air acolyte.

“For the dinner tomorrow?” the woman prompted and Katara flushed.

“The beans,” she replied quickly. The woman nodded and retreated, leaving Katara alone with her thoughts. Five months in the Eastern Air Temple, leading the restoration, made her feel utterly equivocal on peppers and beans. In Aang’s absence, the air acolytes deferred to her, which meant she made decisions about the preservation of Air Nomad culture that she had no business making. She tried her best. She read the scrolls and took dutiful notes when Aang visited every few weeks. She stopped eating meat and started meditating. She wore the orange and yellow robes of the acolytes. She walked each inch of the temple trying to imagine who the old Air Masters were and what they would want now.

The work mattered, she knew. The chance to resurrect a nation didn’t come more than once in a life time, she hoped. All of it served as an act of love, both to Aang and his people. A chance to start anew.

But she needed more than this. She missed being part of the action. She missed seeing the world. Her exploits as the Painted Lady dried up as her time at the air temple elapsed. Her hands purged the surrounding rivers months ago – nothing remained for her to do. All the people who needed her lay outside the radius she could travel each night.

That didn’t stop the reports from coming in. The post-war economic boom continued and with it, greed. Every day stories of abuse fell into her lap, carried by a select few couriers who knew where to direct the letters. Her heart broke but she read each one, helpless.

A letter arrived that morning detailing a group of bandits who over-fished the river Shaolin and sold the stolen goods in a bigger city. Sometimes they stole grain from the houses. No one had caught them, yet. The people feared starvation and the end of their livelihood. They knew how to fish only for what they needed to let the river and the fish colonies thrive. If the bandits knew, they didn’t respect the way of things. They cared only for themselves.

Shaolin, Katara mused, was only a few days away. She could disappear for a few days – perhaps she would tell the air acolytes she needed a week of quiet contemplation.

She knew Aang would hate it, but she left a letter detailing her plans for a week of solitary reflection. Katara absconded, dressed in black, carrying a sack of food pilfered from the kitchen, before anyone could ask where she went. A thrill ran up her spine. Finally, she was doing _something._ She wondered if the Blue Spirit would join her. She sent him the letter from the villagers with a hawk as she departed, as she usually did when she agreed to a mission. Sometimes he joined her, but it was always a surprise.

The three days’ journey freed her. She loved watching the mountains give way to forest. She loved relying on the earth to survive, letting the Mother give her exactly what she needed. She loved sleeping under the stars and watching the moon gaze down at her. _I am capable_ , she remembered, with each step she took. _I am more than a decoration. I am the Painted Lady._

On the second day, she remembered to put her mother’s necklace around her neck. Ornaments of attachment had no place in the Air Temple. She forgot how it scratched at her. The band around her neck yoked her. But the ever-present tightness harkened the feel of snow on her skin, scaling fish with Sokka, knitting with Gran Gran. She didn’t mind this collar, for she chose it. No one else.

The village came into view at sunset the third day, nestled against the thick current of the Shaolin. Immediately the soft lights strung around the docks warmed her heart. People called this place home. They lived in the little wooden houses. They traded for grain with the farmers in the east. The children laughed and played by the river. They swam before they could walk, as she had. They build rafts and canoes and boats. They thanked the river every day.

Katara made her camp on the other side of the Shaolin from the village. Even the wide river couldn’t stifle the sounds of families rising from the collection of homes. She watched the last few fishermen come in for the night, weary and frowning. She waited in a bed of ferns and donned her disguise. Her bright eyes searched.

She didn’t have to wait long. Three shadowy figures floated silently on a raft. _They must make camp upstream,_ she realized. She followed them along the river’s edge. She followed them downstream to the nets they had cleverly hidden. As they bent over the day’s catch, she sent a powerful wave of water over their heads. Spears of water cut through the knots that held the fish in place.

“You will leave this place alone!” Katara screamed as the bandits floundered in the river. She created a vortex of water that lifted the three into the air and relished in their terror, their begging to be set free. She didn’t hear the footfalls behind her until it was too late.

When she dragged herself out of the river later, the jagged cut down her arm and abdomen pulsating in agony, she felt only numb. She would never un-hear the screams of her assailant as he tossed and turned in the water. Or the gurgle as the streams filled his mouth.

“You have no right to interfere like that!” Aang shouted, “You are not outside the law!”

“The people were starving! And how often do the peacekeepers travel to Shaolin? Have they been even once?” Katara retorted. She slammed her palms on the desk that stood between her and the Avatar. The action sent a jolt of pain up her injured arm.

“Things are still uncertain now! You cannot undermine what we worked so hard to build,” Aang said. She didn’t remember him being this angry, ever.

“I will not apologize for helping people!”

“Why do you have to save everyone?” Aang replied, “You got hurt. You almost got caught. Can’t you put the Painted Lady away?”

Katara recoiled as if he had struck her. Rage roiled within her. He didn’t understand, she realized. He didn’t know that her days in the Air Temple choked her. He didn’t understand what it was like to raise this new world only to discover she had no part in it. He didn’t understand what it was like to erase herself, over, and over, and over again to be whatever he needed. He didn’t understand how it stung every day to be relegated to a life of being beautiful and nothing else. She was a doll. She let him, and the rest of the world, make her a doll. She let them all forget what she could do.

Her chest heaved. Two worlds stretched before her in a single moment. In one, she swallowed. All the hurt and rage would slide down her throat every day. She burned the Painted Lady’s clothes. She embraced a numb joy of being a wife, mother, and homemaker. She threw herself deeper into the restoration efforts. She grew more beautiful and stayed that way. She felt honored for even her ceremonial role. She faded. The mask of Katara, the wife of the Avatar, painted permanently over her face.

She could be happy like that, she imagined. She loved Aang. Aang was good and kind. He would make a wonderful father to her children. He would make her life a happy one. She could find honor and fulfillment in his love, in his children, and in resurrecting the Air Nomad nation.

But in the other world, she was Katara. She fought for justice. She did not blindly forgive without restitution. She might not marry the Avatar or raise a family, but she would make her corner of the world safe for all families to thrive. She would cast aside all the masks that did not free her. She would learn who she was away from the war, the reconstruction, the politics, the Avatar. She would honor that new woman as she found her.

The two worlds could exist side-by-side for only so long before one eclipsed the other.

“Enough,” she hissed, “I’ve had enough.”

Katara turned on her heel and ran.

******

When Katara was a little girl, Sokka told her a story of the three faces of the moon. After the moon died, the sky gave birth to a beautiful maiden. The beautiful maiden danced and played without a thought. Everything looked perfect and golden under her gentle light. But as the days stretched on, the maiden’s light grew fuller, and she learned of good and evil. She learned the world for what it was, but she still loved her children in the Water Tribe. She saw them struggle and survive. Her pride made her swell into the mother. The mother grew fat with radiance. Her contentment and love cast away the darkness each night until she was full. But all things end, and even the mother was not infinite. Her light began to dim and she shrunk into the crone. She realized that her children made torches and fire to banish the darkness for themselves. She could keep some of her light for herself.

******

_Crone_

_Two years prior_

“Have the families been paid?” Katara asked archly. The man kneeling before her nodded his head. His pale skin glimmered with the sheen of his sweat.

“Now please,” the man rasped, “Heal me.”

Without a word, she bent water into her palms from the healing pool beside her. She placed her hands upon the man’s shoulders. The vile coils of his sickness made her want to vomit but Katara stayed her course. She thanked whatever gods might listen that the man had complied when he did – he would not have lived another day to haggle over the price of restitution.

When Katara pulled her hands away, the light returned to the man’s eyes. Instead of sallow, he looked hale. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He stood to his feet with vigor and strength instead of the hobbling way he had knelt.

“Thank you,” the man babbled, bowing as he made his retreat, “I will do better.”

“You had best,” Katara replied. She glanced at the scroll at her feet for the next name and the price of his healing.

“The next may enter,” she called, and another sick petitioner entered her tent. This man had lived for many years as a noble. He underpaid his servants. He acted cruelly towards the animals on his land. He was willing to do anything, anything to be well again. Her price had been simple: justice.

In her reply to his first letter, Katara outlined his penance. He would take gold from his coffers and pay 10,000 coin to each servant who had ever worked for him or their families if they had passed. He would donate half of what remained to the local animal shelter. He would vow to never harm another human or creature again. The man’s letter in response arrived two weeks later. Receipts of funds transferred and promises littered the scroll. _Fine,_ Katara wrote back, _come to me and be healed._

When Katara ran away from the Eastern Air Temple, she ran to Ba Sing Se. She bought passage on a ship. She took the train to the Upper Ring. She cried for a long time in Uncle Iroh’s teashop. He helped her shave her head and found her new clothes. He shined the carving on her mother’s necklace until it gleamed.

“If you were unhappy, you did the right thing,” Uncle Iroh assured her, “You matter just as much as the Avatar.”

She just nodded dimly in response.

“You have much to offer, Painted Lady,” Uncle Iroh continued in a whisper. Katara startled as he winked at her. _How did he know?_

“I cannot be her anymore,” Katara confessed, “I almost killed someone.”

She would never forgive herself. She brought herself too close to the edge, again. Hama. Yon Rha. The bandit. _You have a temper,_ she reminded herself, _and you cannot lose it like that again._ She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did. Perhaps Aang had been right about at least one thing after all. She could find a middle path between her need to punish the responsible and forgiveness. She wanted justice, but not at the cost of her soul.

“Then be Katara,” Iroh said with a smile, “Katara is a great lady.” 

_Who was Katara?_ She wondered later. Saving the Shaolin river and her people from the bandits still filled her with pride as much as it filled her with shame. She loved to help. She wanted to leave the world better than she found it.

The idea came to her slowly. After a few weeks in Ba Sing Se, Katara grew restless. She began to walk. She bought maps of the Earth Kingdom. She packed bags of supplies. One day Iroh came to her with an ostrich horse and a sack of gold.

“From a wealthy benefactor,” he said with a wink. Katara grinned. He meant Zuko. Zuko’s letters grew increasingly frantic when she stopped replying. She didn’t know how to explain to anyone what happened in the Eastern Air Temple, so she left the narrative to Aang. Let the world find out on his terms that Princess Katara of the Southern Water Tribe left. Let them judge her and hate her and curse her. She wanted no part of it.

But she didn’t know how to tell Zuko, so she didn’t. Her trip to Ba Sing Se took less than a week. Though she hadn’t told anyone where she was going or what she planned, Zuko sat waiting for her on the steps outside Uncle Iroh’s tea shop, looking as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“I was worried,” he shrugged as she stared at him, mouth agape.

“How did you know?”

He shrugged again, “I heard a rumor the Avatar couldn’t find his girlfriend, and I guessed that you would come here. You mentioned how much you love the city in your letters. And I figured you wouldn’t want to be around your family right now.”

Katara swallowed the cotton feeling in her mouth. She couldn’t say anything back. Zuko had only been able to stay for two days. He distracted her with adventures in the city. They flew kites and pet animals in the zoo. They ate delicate cakes and drank too much tea. Laughing with a friend brought some of the light back into her chest. For so long, keeping her heart in her body felt impossible. Catching herself and forcing her feet to the ground challenged her every day. It felt easier to exist with her heart floating above the clouds, untouchable, as she spun her web of lies. The tyranny of her life on the shelf as a doll did nothing to put her heart back.

But with Zuko she felt her heart dance back down its tether and settle within her. _I would never make you my spy or hide you away,_ he had written a long time ago, _you are powerful as you are._ He cut his hand on a knife chopping vegetables for Iroh and Katara healed him without thinking. His mumbled thanks made her pause. For so long, her healing skills stagnated. Maybe healing others would help heal her too.

The idea tumbled around in her head until the day Iroh presented the ostrich horse and gold. She knew exactly where she wanted to go when she swung her leg over the animal.

“I’ll see you later,” she promised.

First, she walked the Lower Ring, offering healing to those who needed it, free of charge. She tried not to remember how people wept in desperation and joy. _I’ll make this right,_ she vowed. By night she studied scrolls of healing that she had long neglected. She learned new techniques of bending the water around burns and infections. She learned how to feel blockages in the blood and how to gently pull the sticky clots apart. When it felt too close to blood bending, she remembered she healed, not harmed.

After a month in the Lower Ring, Katara left Ba Sing Se entirely. She walked South as far as she could without leaving the Earth Kingdom. She offered her skills wherever she went and asked to learn from the local healers. Nine months after she began her journey, she began to hear a new name, Katara, the Woman Who Walks the World. As a courtesy, she started writing ahead to the towns she wanted to visit, so that the sick knew to look for her. She passed through only the poorest towns, other than her stops in the bigger cities for supplies. Letters of supplication filled the mail boxes that used to house the Painted Lady’s correspondence.

Of course, the rich wrote as often as the poor, demanding the skills of the best healer in the land. Katara ignored these letters at first. She refused to prioritize the wealthy in a world where their needs came first everywhere else. She wanted the poor, the sickest of them all, to reap the benefits of her labor. Listening to those who fell sick from unsafe working conditions, from starvation, from abuse, from neglect, however she came to realize that perhaps the rich deserved more of her attention.

She made the first offer to the wealthiest merchant in Gaoling while visiting Toph. She would heal him if he paid reparations to those he hurt. He would promise to treat his workers fairly, and she would check up on him from time to time to see he kept his vow. Otherwise, he would find another healer. The man agreed. And Katara now lingered in the big cities after she collected her supplies. She saw justice done and she healed. She felt free.

The next summer, the Blue Spirit joined the Woman Who Walks the World. Zuko had written that he both needed and deserved a vacation, and so he and his dragon flew far and wide to meet Katara for a few days at a time. The Blue Spirit stood guard outside the healing tent. He looked frightening, but if the crowds listened, they could hear laughter passed between the healer and the spirit. He carefully set up the tent each morning and helped Katara pack it when her work was done for the day. He escorted her on her ostrich horse back to the inn where she stayed. He hauled her water from the stream and food from the market. For the neediest crowds, he distributed gold without a word.

Katara liked to joke that Zuko was the best wealthy benefactor a lady could ask for – truly full service. Body guard, handy man, water-fetcher, food-gatherer, joke-teller, friend. Not that Katara particularly needed a body guard or handy man. She collected her own food and water in his absence. She liked her own jokes well enough. But she did need a friend.

Once that summer Sokka and Suki visited on a hot air balloon repurposed after the war. They were full of smiles and sweat through their Water Tribe clothes. They marveled at her shaved head. They told her about learning the territory from Hakoda. They spent their last months building igloos and homes for the new families relocated in the South. They organized educational tours of the Fire Nation to teach the people about the wonders of the Water Tribe and to learn from them in return. Sokka built an inventor’s laboratory under the snow. Suki started teaching the Southerners self-defense. Once a month she returned to Kiyoshi to be with her sisters. Katara remembered those days with great fondness. No one mentioned Aang or asked about what transpired – she suspected that Zuko had warned them.

Leaving Aang still hurt every day that summer, though over a year had passed. Katara suspected that the wound might never heal. That was okay. The price felt small compared to the years of shrinking herself. Sometimes she missed the fancy dinners and parties. She missed knowing that her heart and soul went into the construction plans for a new world. These days, she woke up as Katara, lived as Katara, and went to bed as Katara. That was enough. That was everything.

Six months after leaving, she received a letter from Aang. He said he was proud of her and that he forgave her. He said that she would always have a place by his side. The letter hurt so much she had to laugh. She laughed and laughed. She knew from Zuko and Suki and Sokka and reports from the world around her that Aang was okay. He kept working on the Air Temple restoration. He worked hard to build Republic City. Gossip said that he withdrew from society and seemed a touch less ebullient. _Maybe he’s growing up too,_ Katara mused.

When it hurt less, she wrote back that they would always be friends. She was proud of him too. She looked forward to working with him again someday. Once a month she began giving him reports on her travels. She told him the challenges facing the Earth Kingdom she saw on her journeys. He asked her advice on how to resolve a conflict between farmers in the Fire Nation. Slowly, surely, they learned each other again. But Katara knew she would never love him like that again.

If she had wanted to tell Sokka and Suki all that, she was sure that they would have listened. But instead, they went fishing and made corn husk dolls. When they left, Katara felt a piece of her heart go with them in the big balloon in the sky.

Zuko noticed her quietude when her brother had gone. He brought her mooncakes from the Fire Nation and made her laugh by doing his best Uncle Iroh impression. He told her about all the progress Azula made. She loved the way the light shone in his eyes when he spoke of his sister. He looked hopeful, she realized. All the love and goodness Ozai tried to stamp out lived on. He was her best friend.

Every time he visited her, even after the summer ended, he brought her gold. He insisted he had reparations to make too. She accepted it and thanked him. She made sure to tell her petitioners that a good man from the Fire Nation cared enough about them to see them healed.

When Zuko left after that summer, he promised to return the next one. And he did. He visited her once a month through the fall, winter, and spring, until the summer rolled in again. Then the shadow of his dragon cast over the skies above her once a week, sometimes less. Every time he landed, Katara threw herself into his arms. It was nice to have a friend.

Maybe everyone knew that he had been the Blue Spirit all along. He wore his mask less and less. Other Fire Nation citizens with wealth to spare began donating to Katara’s cause. She had more money than she could spend on her healing supplies and travel expenses. What was left over went to the people who needed it. She started teaching quick healing clinics when she stopped in a village. Teaching the errant water benders she found across the Earth Kingdom filled her with pride and purpose.

Her life was a good one.

As she healed her last patient for the night, she smiled. She watched him leave and packed up her tent. She swung her leg over her ostrich horse. She fell asleep in the inn dreaming of firelight dancing in the wind.

_One month prior_

“Katara.”

Zuko’s voice pulled her out of her trance. She attempted a new healing method that required a delicate weave of the water. Somehow the unique configuration enhanced the resonance of the water particles, making for stronger healing. The water splashed to the ground.

“Hmmm?” she responded, still fixated on the healing pattern. Growing stronger as a healer every day brought her satisfaction she had never known. Knowing that each innovation could mean life and death for the people who came to her, she found it hard to stop working.

“I want to show you something,” Zuko said. Katara looked up at him with her full attention for the first time that day. Zuko arrived last night on Druk, looking haggard as always. Such was the life of the Fire Lord. He wore his traveling clothes but had forgotten to remove his gold headpiece in his haste to leave. The contrast made her smile. His arrival surprised her – he usually wrote before he came these days. She thought he had scheduled a series of meetings for the next week about growing dissent in the outskirts of the Fire Nation that he wanted to quash. He waved off her questions with a shaky grin that Katara didn’t quite trust. She knew when someone kept a secret.

The dawn broke over their little campsite as Zuko made his invitation.

“I want to show you something,” he repeated, cast in a golden glow. He held out a hand to help her up. His fingers felt warm in hers. When she rose fully, he gently tugged a lock of her hair. It hung beneath her chin now. She started growing it back out after the solstice last year, for reasons she didn’t fully understand herself.

“Then let’s go,” Katara said.

Soaring through the skies on Druk felt like true freedom. With the wind in her hair and Zuko’s sturdy form to keep her from falling, she felt like she could go anywhere. Druk flew faster than Appa but she regretted Appa’s warmth. They didn’t have far to go, and she missed the skies as soon as they landed.

“Close your eyes,” Zuko said. Katara shut them immediately. He helped her off Druk’s back and led her a little ways. Sprigs of grass tickled her ankles. Clear, crisp air filled her lungs. The water around her felt different, and there was a lot of it. She thought she heard a waterfall. When Zuko told her to open her eyes again, she found herself in an oasis.

The waterfall in the distance fed a beautiful, teeming pool that glittered in the morning sunshine. Trees swayed in the gentle breeze and birds flit from branch to branch, calling to each other.

“It’s gorgeous,” Katara sighed. She turned slowly on the spot to take it all in.

“I thought of you when I found it.”

“Thank you,” she smiled at him.

Zuko averted his gaze and ran a hand through his hair – a gesture she hadn’t seen since they were teenagers.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Zuko laughed, a note of hysteria tainting it. He still wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Part of her gut knew. Their dance around the Earth Kingdom morphed into something else in the last year. He always brought her gold and gifts of healing supplies, but a year ago, he brought her a bolt of sapphire blue fabric. Nothing fancy, but the wool hung sturdily. She knew any dress she made would hold up against the demands of her work.

“You should have something that looks like home,” Zuko said by way of explanation.

When he visited next, Zuko brought her a delicate soap and lotion. For her hands, he told her. They looked rough the last time he saw her. One night she arrived in an inn to find that her mysterious, wealthy benefactor had bought her a night in a suite and paid for the most expensive dinner on the menu. Katara found it a bit silly given that Zuko’s money bought almost everything she needed or used anyways, but the gesture was kind. She wouldn’t indulge herself like that and he knew it. Two months later, he held her hand longer than necessary helping her out of a boat. He looked at her like she set the sun on fire.

At first, fear gripped Katara. The last time she fell in love, she got pinned down. She lost her power. She tried to ignore Zuko’s change of heart and promised herself that he would always be her friend. But one day, when he let her have the last bun at the bakery, she wondered if falling in love with Zuko would break her apart. _Don’t I love him already,_ she asked. Didn’t her heart beat faster when she saw Druk in the skies? He was a balm for all her hurts. He was the warmth of the sun in the darkest night. All the years gone by and he had loved her for Katara. And he loved her now without asking for anything in return.

Slowly she returned his long gazes. She let herself linger in his touch. When he visited, she baked him fish pies like her mother made. She made him a new saddle for Druk and didn’t tell him how long it took to capture the deer-moose, skin it, and treat the leather at a local tannery. Every time she stepped closer to him, she waited for him to ask her to change. When would he ask her to be someone else?

Not once, it turned out.

She loved him back. And now, looking at him, she hoped so desperately he would name their silly, endless dance for what it was.

“Tell me, Zuko,” Katara said, gazing back at her friend.

Zuko just laughed harder. When he composed himself, she noticed the shake of his hands.

“You’d think after everything that we’ve done, this would be easy, right?” he joked. Katara nodded eagerly, even as her heart hammered and her stomach turned over. _He will never cage you._

“But frankly Katara, you still terrify me.”

This time Katara laughed too.

“Tell me!” she shouted over his peals of laughter.

“I love you.”

She felt alive. She felt reckless. She felt impossible. She wanted to bend the water out of the pool and send rain across the forest.

“I love –” she started to say.

“Wait!” Zuko interrupted her, holding his hands up, “Let me finish.”

Katara pressed her lips together and waited.

“I love you,” Zuko repeated as he took a step closer to her, “Traveling with you for the last few years have been the happiest years of my life. I want to spend every day with you.”

Zuko pulled something from his pocket and Katara gasped.

“Can I borrow your necklace?”

Trembling, Katara undid the clasp and handed it over. She watched as Zuko carefully removed the bone carving. He threaded the choker through a sleeve of crimson ribbon with a gossamer panel that let the blue leather shine through. He snapped an obsidian outline of the sun around the bone and attached it back to the leather.

“Be my Fire Lady.”

Before Katara could speak again, Zuko continued, “I know you’re going to ask – I have thought long and hard about this. I know I love you. I know that the Fire Nation loves you. I know that you are good and righteous and you will help me rule my people fairly. Kindly.

“I promise that I will never ask you to stop wandering. You might have more responsibilities on Fire Island, but you will still have time to go where you please. The example you set for me and my people is powerful and I will not stop you. In fact, I hope to join you when and where I can.

“You will be my equal. My partner. You already are, of course. You will be Katara, Princess of the Southern Water Tribe, the Woman Who Walks the World, Fire Lady. You will be my wife. And best, you will be my friend. You will be whatever you desire.”

Zuko let the words hang in the air for a moment. Katara caught her breath.

“But first I ask that you take a month to decide. Think it over, as I have. This is your choice, Katara.”

He held her gaze evenly, as he knew what her choices meant to her.

“I am holding a party one month from today to celebrate the summer solstice. If you wish to join me as Fire Lady, please meet me at the palace and wear your necklace. It will be our party, and we will celebrate our engagement. If you wish to remain my friend alone, please come anyways,” he said with a smile. 

Katara smiled back.

That day, they swam in the pool without saying anything for a long while. When the sun rose high in the sky, they clambered back on Druk and Zuko returned her to the campsite. He looked at her blindly before departing.

Katara turned her old-yet-new necklace over in her hands.

She had a decision to make.

_Now_

“Zuko,” Katara breathed. He looked stunning in his full regalia. His headpiece rained light down over the gold stitching in his crimson robes. He looked elegant, every inch the Fire Lord. She had seen him across the room when the party first began. He greeted each guest in kind, regardless of status. He helped a servant clean up appetizers that had tumbled from her tray. Katara hadn’t wanted to disturb him, he was so clearly in his element. For all he had traveled with her, Katara had had few opportunities to see the Fire Lord incarnate.

Besides, her stomach wouldn’t settle and she couldn’t stop twisting her fingers. She couldn’t do anything before she talked to Sokka and Suki and Uncle Iroh, regardless. Or at least, that was what she told herself. So she snuck away when she could no longer stand the crush of people. She just wanted Zuko. She hoped he would find her here, as he had found her so many times on her adventures.

“Katara,” Zuko said. She noticed how his eyes darted to her bare neck. His shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly. Katara waited until he met her gaze to pull the old-yet-new necklace from her pouch.

“You made me an offer,” Katara began, stepping closer to Zuko. He took a sharp inhale of breath at the sight of his handiwork.

“And I have considered it.”

Katara placed the necklace in his palm and told him, “I love you. I love our travels together. I love that we make a difference, together.”

She cupped a hand against his cheek.

“I will be your wife for as long as I live.”

As Zuko clasped the necklace behind her, it did not feel like a chain.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all, isn’t she fucking incredible?   
> anyways, go find me at @donkey-is-my-spirit-animal on tumblr. if you send me anything, i will forward and provide her answers.


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